The festival opened Feb. 8
with the U.S. premiere of Adil
Hussain’s “What Will People
Say.” The film centers on the life
of a 16-year-old girl, Nisha, who
lives a double life. “At home with
her family she is the perfect
Pakistani daughter, but when out
with her friends, she is a normal
Norwegian teenager. When her
father catches her in bed with her
boyfriend, Nisha’s two worlds
brutally collide,” according to a
synopsis on imdb.com.

Arshad Khan’s personal docu-mentary, “Abu,”was the festi-val’s centerpiece film about ajourney to the center of a frag-mented family while they grap-ple with religion, sexuality, colo-nialism and migration. The festi-val closed Feb. 11 with theMarathi film “Chumbak,” a com-ing-of-age story of Baalu, a year-old boy in Mumbai, who is on thecrossroads of his aspirations andmorals.

The festival had one worldpremiere, six international pre-mieres, two U.S. premieres, nineTexas premieres and one Dallaspremiere. “We received a lot ofpositive feedback about our pro-gramming this year, as the issuesraised in our films ranged fromfather/son relationships to childslavery and sex education inIndia to teenage depression inthe U.S. to the plight of SouthAsians living in Europe,” festivaldirector and founder JitinHingorani says. “At the end ofthe day, our audiences keepcoming back because of thestrong content we showcase, andwe are already preparing toincorporate audience and juryawards in the 5th iteration of ourfestival.”

The Dallas/Forth Worth South Asian
Film Festival was held Feb. 8 to 11.

Thanks to his Netflix comedy special, “Vir Das: Abroad
Understanding,” and a recently announced Hulu comedy
series, Das has penetrated
the American entertainment
world with his unique brand
of humor.

“While I didn’t have the
pleasure of knowing Vir while
he was a student at Knox, I
have enjoyed watching the
trajectory of his career both in
his home country of India and
here in the United States,”
said Knox College president
Teresa L. Amott.

“Knox welcomed the first
international student to campus in 1863 and, more than

150 years later, international
students make up nearly 20

percent of our student body
and come from 51 countries,”
she said.

Back in India, Das is also
reportedly writing the script
for “Delly Belly 2,” the Deccan
Chronicle reports. Das was
part of the cast of the original
bold, youth-centric film directed by Abhinay Deo with
Imran Khan and Kunal Roy
Kapur in lead roles.

-Series has released a devotion-

al video “Bhole Baba,” on the
auspicious occasion of Mahashivratri,
Feb. 13. Sung by Divya Kumar, the
music has been composed by Anu
Malik and the lyrics are by Puneet.

Long before T-Series released
Bollywood soundtracks, the music
label was in its early days known for
releasing pre-recorded bhajans and
aartis in praise of Lord Shiva.

In fact, T-Series founder Gulshan
Kumar would prominently feature in
the videos of several devotional
songs released in the 1980s and

1990s.

“Devotional music has alwaysbeen a big market for us, right fromthe days when my father was han-dling the affairs of the company,” T-Series chairman and managingdirector Bhushan Kumar said in apress release.